Abstinence for adults: A foolish and costly errand: government hectoring of young grown-ups to just say no to sex.

Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle |
November 13, 2006

The government has a public safety interest in trying to curtail some adult behaviors. Drunken driving is one. Sex between consenting adults is not.

Yet recently published guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services encourage state health officials to use part of their Abstinence Education Program grants to dissuade single 20-somethings from having sex.

Critics charge that the government's $170 million abstinence-only program fails even its intended audience of school-age youngsters. Various studies of abstinence education show mixed results. Some some studies show no reduction in sexually transmitted disease or unintended pregnancies. Comprehensive sex education, which includes information about birth control and protection against sexually transmitted diseases, delivers consistently superior outcomes, research shows.

There is no reason to believe that efforts to convince adults to refrain from having sex outside of marriage would succeed. What little success the effort brought would hardly justify the millions that would be directed toward such folly.

For one matter, the National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 2004, 1.5 million babies were born to single mothers, more than half of whom were in their early 20s. That suggests that many, if not most young adults are having sex. Other data point out that young adults are more likely than other groups to contract STDs.

Obviously, what young people clearly need is information to help them avoid the health risks and unintended pregnancies that go along with unprotected sex. That means the facts about condoms for disease prevention and other forms of birth control. Instruction on the benefits of abstaining before marriage could be included.